Happy New Year, everyone!
I’ve been slacking on making blog posts this year, but that’s largely because I’ve been putting more focus on writing and less on blogging when I’m depressed or disappointed in my production. The “woe is me” posts just don’t accomplish anything, so I decided to stop writing them. More positivity in the new year, less doom!
2023 was quite a productive year for me, with more books and anthologies published in a single year than I’ve ever done. I started the year with Panthers’ Reign, the sequel to Wolves’ Dominion. This Sapphic fantasy romance duet has been my most successful project yet (though the end of 2023 is rapidly catching up—more on that in a bit).
February also brought the solo release of One Night Stand-in, which had previously been featured in an anthology. This novella has bounced between being sold on Amazon and being available as a free reader magnet. I’m still trying to find its place in the world, its niche, and hopefully in 2024 I’ll figure out what I want to do with it. Haha!
In March I released Hunting Woods with my writer wifey/coauthor Angelique Jordonna. Though not my usual genre, it has received great reviews as we find our place in the indie horror realm.
April brought the return of the Abnormalverse! I received the rights to the series back from the original publisher and rereleased the first two books with new covers, plus introduced the third book in the series. Book four is on my writing docket, but unfortunately the Abnormal books are moving rather slowly, so it’s not as high a priority as the romance books are, which tend to sell faster.
At the end of May/early June, I released Micah’s Girls: A Single Dad Romance. This book has done fairly well, and it’s my first foray into the sweet and spicy realm of romance.
July was quiet, but August picked up with my latest Nowhere book, Hell’s Princess. Its sales have been decent for a Nowhere book, though not as good as Pact with the Pack or Irresistible Monstrosities. Still, it pulls in quite a few page reads on Kindle Unlimited each month, so I think people are enjoying it.
Things were quiet on the release front until November, when I released the full story to Xalan Claimed, my first alien romance. It had been partially released earlier in the year in a charity anthology, but with the whole story done (and two more books on the way in 2024), it seems to be well received.
Finally, in December I released Call Me Bunny, a dark contemporary whychoose romance that has exploded onto the scene (relatively speaking, anyway)! I’ve made more on it in the past two weeks than on most titles the whole year. Bunny was also my thickest book yet, coming in just under 85,000 words. It’s also my most trigger-filled, kink-filled, and trope-filled book HAHA A TikTokker (WhyChoose Mayhem) was kind enough to make a post listing them, so I turned it into a reader’s “shopping list.” 😉
In 2023, I also got taken in and adopted by an amazing PA, Sarah Klinger. This woman helps me so much and gives me tons of support, both personally and professionally. I couldn’t have done as well as I did the second half of 2023 if she hadn’t come into my life!
As if that wasn’t enough, I dipped my toes into subscription services this year, starting with a (failed) Patreon and moving to a Ream account, which is geared more towards authors. So far I’ve got two stories started there, so you can get early, first-look access to chapters as I write them!
Now that the 2023 recap is out of the way … What’s in store for ’24?
Perhaps that’s best “said” in graphic form:
That’s not everything that’s coming in 2024, but it’s a start. Haha. I’m doing more cowrites in the new year, plus some exciting anthology and shared-world projects. There are two more Nowhere books on the horizon, plus a Nowhere prequel novella, the second and third Xalanite Mates books, and more!
While I’m not making any “resolutions” per se, I do plan on focusing more on my writing and trying to keep more organized about it. I want more releases, yes, but I also want to make sure they’re still quality works. In 2023 I started something I call “tandem writing,” where I work on a few different WIPs at once. If one project stalls/gets blocked, I move on to another and keep writing. So far, this process seems to be at least moderately successful. I keep the creative juices flowing, and I’m not “wasting” time by beating my head against the wall on one solitary project that won’t behave. That has seemed to work so far, so I’m keeping with the chaos and letting the ideas flow where they may.
With all that said, here’s to 2024! May you have a less terrible year than the three previous 😉